Purposefully duping everyone with fudged emissions numbers will cost Volkswagen plenty as well as the impact it will make to the conservative argument for fewer regulations and less government is the focus of this Paul Krugman piece. Thoughts?

Dewey, Cheatem & Howe

Item: The C.E.O. of Volkswagen has resigned after revelations that his company committed fraud on an epic scale, installing software on its diesel cars that detected when their emissions were being tested, and produced deceptively low results.

Item: The former president of a peanut company has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly shipping tainted products that later killed nine people and sickened 700.

Item: Rights to a drug used to treat parasitic infections were acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals, which specializes not in developing new drugs but in buying existing drugs and jacking up their prices. In this case, the price went from $13.50 a tablet to $750.

In other words, it has been a good few days for connoisseurs of business predators.

No doubt I, like anyone who points out ethical lapses on the part of some companies, will be accused of demonizing business. But I’m not claiming that all businesspeople are demons, just that some of them aren’t angels.

There are, it turns out, people in the corporate world who will do whatever it takes, including fraud that kills people, in order to make a buck. And we need effective regulation to police that kind of bad behavior, not least so that ethical businesspeople aren’t at a disadvantage when competing with less scrupulous types. But we knew that, right?

There are bad apples in any business.. In some cases, like this one, products aren't developed enough technically to conform to the draconian standards bureaucrats and politicians demand. Operating at the government standard would produce an expensive low powered dog that would cost sales and jobs.. It takes time to work out the technology that is demanded. Pencil pushers and desk sitters don't understand that..BMW and MB are next on this witch hunt.. Anything to push the new green technology, even if it is inefficient, costly, and in the infant stages..

Seems VW is the only car company not to have developed legit software...unless many more frauds surface in the car industry. Hyundai just announced they have to recall several hundred thousand Sonatas to replace engines with bad crankshafts that could cause stalling and accidents.